ARTICLES ABOUT BERM BY DATE - PAGE 3

The Town Council last week approved the site plan for the Potter Park Community Center and Gymnasium to be located at 4300 SW 57th Terrace. Plans call for a 20,245-square-foot gymnasium. The building will include a game room, weight room and boxing training area with one ring for competition and another for training. There will be an office reception area, shower facilities and a locker room. A community project room also is planned. The facility will be operated by the Police Athletic League.

On Lake Okeechobee A Caterpillar dump truck barrels by, swirling clouds of dust into the air. Strangely, the earth-mover is not entirely out of place as it treads heavily, 2.8 miles inside the lake's western shore. Amid a record drought, the water has rolled back farther than many can remember, exposing an enormous stretch of sun-baked lake bed now dry and green: a pasture of terrestrial plants. Weeds in the construction zone north of Indian Prairie Canal stand so tall you can barely see over them to view the waterline retreating toward the east -- another eight football fields away.

The association that governs the 50-home Windmill Lake Estates neighborhood now has control of the 45-foot-long, city-owned landscaped berm that separates it from the townhouse project being built on the other side. The City Commission recently approved the agreement with the Windmill Lake Estates Maintenance Association to take over the berm, which is west of Bonaventure Boulevard near Vista Park Road. Arvida-JMB Partners built and landscaped the berm 10 years ago to separate the upscale Windmill Lake community on the north side from the 52-acre, pork chop-shaped site on the south side.

Inline skaters and roller hockey players will soon be getting a new rink. The city has committed more than $300,000 to build a full-scale roller rink at Pioneer Park to accommodate a growing interest in roller hockey. Construction on the rink, 87 feet by 130 feet, will begin in June and should be completed by October. CRS Heavy Construction of Deerfield Beach is the general contractor. "We had one of the first roller rinks in South Florida at Hillsboro Park," said Dan Rodgerson, assistant director of community services for the city of Deerfield Beach.

Though much of it is more than a half-century old, the 35-foot earthen flood wall around Lake Okeechobee has never been put to a real test by nature, federal engineers say. Unwilling to wait for a hurricane or the next El Nino to provide such a test, the Army Corps of Engineers is proposing a $67 million plan to fortify what it considers the Herbert Hoover Dike's weakest segment -- a 22-mile stretch from Port Mayaca to Belle Glade. "We feel there is an unacceptable level of risk it would breach," Corps engineer Tony DiPiero said.

The members of the Country Club Ranches homeowners association will meet tonight to discuss three key issues: The proposed berm on Miramar Parkway, traffic congestion and blasting. Glassman Development, the developer of Monarch Lakes to the north of the Ranches, promised to put a berm along Miramar Parkway, according to association president Larry Rockliff. Ranches residents had complained that the single-family homes in Monarch Lakes would destroy the character of their neighborhood.

Gathering on lush green grass before 30-foot trees, more than 200 residents of Boca Chase held signs and yelled they don't want I-95-type sound walls in front of their community, which is on U.S. 441. The protest in front of Boca Chase lasted only half an hour but attracted representatives from Boca Raton, state Sen. Ron Klein and state Rep. Curt Levine, both Democrats, who also spoke against the walls. Some of the signs held by residents read, "This is a residential area not a highway I-95," and "Give us a berm and wall, not a prison."

From Ed Karpf's living room, traffic on the Sawgrass Expressway is a dull hum. But open his windows at 5 p.m., and that hum is a roar of semi-tractors, cars and motorcycles driving past his condo at 70 miles per hour. "When we're out on our porch, my wife and I have to yell at each other to be heard," Karpf said. "Certainly, the noise is unbearable now." The Sawgrass Expressway has been a part of life in western Tamarac since the highway opened 13 years ago. But a plan to expand the highway to six lanes past several condominiums and housing developments has some residents steamed.

Residents of the Polo Club of Boca Raton don't like the landscaping job done at Morikami Park Elementary School west of Delray Beach, their neighbor to the north and west. The problem? They still can see the school. "It's a disgrace," said Sandra Ungar, whose home borders the back of the school. "It looks like a prison." School principal Lynda Crandall wasn't aware there was a problem. "They've added a sizable amount of landscaping," Crandall said. "You really can't see much of the homes at all."

Although unsure exactly what to make of a squat wall of peat rising inside Lake Okeechobee, water managers said Wednesday that they would investigate how it came to be and its ecological impact. A broken line stretching 30 miles along the lake's western shoreline, the berm is 3 to 4 feet high, with sections 4 to 6 feet wide. Lake activist Wayne Nelson urged water managers not to overstudy the berm, forged from decomposed bulrush, hydrilla and other aquatic plants raked into a pile by wind and waves.